While social media has taken the world by storm, and content marketing continues to evolve, email marketing hasn’t gone anywhere. It still remains one of the best investments of time and energy a company can make. Email marketing has a ROI of 3,800%, you can earn back $38 for every $1 you spend!

Of course, this is all dependent on how well you earn opt-ins from your visitors. That’s why we’re looking at an exciting email opt-in plugin today called Bloom plugin by Elegant Themes - a list building plugin for WordPress. Today we’ll review this highly regarded tool and look at seven ways it can increase your opt-ins and ultimately, your conversions.

When WordPress users finish creating their blogs or websites, starting an email list is at the top of the priority list. When you secure a subscriber, you’ve essentially earned a lead that is already interested enough in your brand to make an effort and give you their email.

There is no shortage of email opt-in plugins available for WordPress.

Some are free, others require a premium fee to download. This product is in a crowded landscape, so let’s see if it has what it takes to stand out from the rest. In this Elegant Themes Bloom review, we're going to take a deep dive at the benefits of using it as your email plugin for WordPress.

Summary

When you’re getting set up with the Bloom opt-in plugin, you’ll need to start by connecting it with your email marketing service of choice. Bloom is compatible with these mailing software packages:

MailChimp

Constant Contact

Mad Mimi

iContact

InfusionSoft

Feedblitz

Aweber

Campaign Monitor

GetResponse

SendInBlue

MailPoet Ontraport

It’s fair to say that your marketing software of choice will be compatible, so there are no issues there. Start by setting up your account. Go to Tools > Bloom Settings to do so. You should see a page like this one:

This begins the process of connecting the two accounts together so they can work in tandem. Once you’ve done this, you can get to work creating opt-in forms. Go to Bloom > Email Optins to get started.

Here you’ll find the list of your current forms and some basic analytics that give you an idea of how they’re performing at a glance.

What’s really exciting about this product is the sheer amount of opt-in forms you can choose from. In total, there are six different kinds of display settings you can use to create your lead magnets:

1. Pop-Up

This first type allows you to place your form within a lightbox that appears when certain triggers are met. These are effective, but they should be used sparingly because they take up the entire screen.

2. Fly-In

This type of opt-in is smaller and less intrusive than the pop-up. This form slides up from the bottom corner of the page and can also be triggered with a variety of options. This type of opt-in doesn’t interrupt the user experience, which makes it a solid choice.

3. Below Post

This type of opt-in is used often across all kinds of websites. It works by adding the form to the bottom of your pages. That way, when the reader is finished, they have the option to sign up to your list.

4. Inline

An Inline form allows you to generate a shortcode that you can they use to place an opt-in form anywhere on the page. This option offers a ton of freedom for testing purposes.

5. Locked Content

Locked content is another type of opt-in form that, while effective, should be used sparingly. It required your users to sign up with their details before they can access something on the site. This is usually used for free downloads or exclusive content that acts as an incentive for signing up.

6. Widget

The final option is one that provides a widget you can use from the WordPress dashboard. This allows you to place the form in the sidebar, footer, or anywhere else you prefer.

Here’s a visual look at the opt-in form types:

When setting up your opt-ins, you’ll find that there are several ways to trigger them as well. These include the following:

7 Ways You Can Skyrocket Your Email Subscribers and Conversions

It’s safe to say that Bloom has all the features you need and can easily be considered one of the best WordPress email optin plugin from Elegant Themes, but how does it benefit your business?

Let’s take a look at seven ways your email opt-ins can boost your conversions and your business as a whole:

1. Pop-Ups Are Effective

This option for lightbox pop-ups may seem like a feature that can be annoying for visitors, but there’s no denying that they work. In fact, a study done by eConsultancy found that an overlay like this can increase opt-ins by up to 400%.

Here’s an example of the pop-up you’ll see when you visit Jeff Bullas’ (the internet marketing guru) blog:

A simple pop-up like this can be made using Bloom optin and offers a great way to earn more emails and ultimately conversions. It’s important to test your pop-up design as it will give you insight into how the headline, design, and triggers work with your specific audience.

2. Streamlined Forms Win Conversions

Another great benefit of using opt-in forms, is the amount way you can make them simple and effective for turning visitors into subscribers. With this plugin for WordPress, you can make opt-in forms a part of your streamlined sales funnel.

While it’s important to capture information about your subscribers so you can better understand them, balance this out with a short and simple form/process to win more subscribers. Since Bloom allows you to create these simple forms, you’ll find a huge benefit here in the form of more subscribers that will happily fill out your simple opt-in form.

3. Informed Decision-Making

The greatest opt-in plugins offer a well-rounded analytics feature to help you understand how your opt-in form designs and delivery are resonating with your audience. Bloom as this in top form with the statistics it offers.

Opt-in forms offer great opportunities for A/B testing, and this is no different. By using the built-in statistics, combined with tests of different form types and designs, you can quickly gather a lot of valuable information about your audience and your opt-in forms.

All of this contributes to an informed approach to your decisions. Data-backed decisions always lead to better performance and conversions on future efforts and Bloom can help you make those decisions.

4. Target an Engaged Audience

Email marketing is so successful due in part to its extremely targeted nature. The people who fill out your opt-in form are either current customers or highly valuable leads. They are interested and engaged with your brand which is what drove them to fill out the form in the first place.

These people are excited about receiving content from you. You don’t need to convince them to read it, because they’re already engaged. That kind of opportunity is something that doesn’t present itself often.

For this reason alone, having an opt-in form on your website offers huge benefits for your business in terms of engagement and conversions.

5. Build a Loyal Audience

The truth about website visitors, is that most of them will only visit once and then never come back. This is true especially when looking at traffic from social media. An email opt-in form offers an opportunity to turn these one-off visitors into dedicated members of your audience.

The people who sign up to your list are within your grasp at a moment’s notice. You don’t have to worry about things like organic reach or paid advertising when you have a direct line of communication with your audience.

Of course, this benefit shouldn’t be abused. If you constantly pester your subscribers, you’re bound to lose them. This is one of those situations where great power also comes with great responsibility.

6. Repurpose Older Content

Many blog posts will have a time in the limelight before they fade out of existence. An amazing benefit of email opt-ins are the ability to repurpose this content and deliver it to a fresh audience. You can grab the best parts of an old post and place it into your newsletter.

This will offer your audience the chance to see something they otherwise would never encounter. Not only will it be useful for them, but it will also act as an incentive for new people to sign up on your website.

7. The Most Profitable Type of Marketing

Perhaps the greatest benefit of a program like Bloom and, ultimately, an entire mailing marketing setup, is the potential for conversions and the low cost. Consider these compelling statistics:

Emails generate 50% more sales than other types of marketing

Email marketing is 40 times better at earning customers than social media

95% of people find that communication from recognized brands are useful

Small businesses have found that message automation is worth $273 an hour based on surveys.

The best part? It’s nowhere near as costly as other types of marketing. When we look at social media or television, there’s a huge cost to target the proper audience. With email, every person on your list is someone you want to target.

My Experience With The Bloom WordPress Plugin

The features are there, and the benefits are undeniable, but how does it perform when stacked against other similar plugins? Well, for starters, the custom control panel works well despite not being a native WordPress interface.

It provides a smooth and clean user experience, which is always a great start. The wide variety of mailer software that it connects with is also a major plus. For new users, I also appreciated the presence of help buttons along the way. Some of them offer simple tips, while others link to online documents.

The six different types of opt-in forms offers a wide range of options for specific tastes and testing. I don’t know that I would use all of them, most likely one or two for my audience, but once again Bloom proves that it can adapt to all kinds of websites.

For quick form construction, Elegant Themes Bloom offers a wide range of templates you can use to quickly design a form. The sheer number of them is nothing short of impressive. Once you’ve established a basis for the form, the plugin allows you to further customize every aspect.

The option to preview the form gives you the chance to see it in action without having to leave the customization screen. All of this contributes to an extremely seamless and user-friendly experience.

Besides having the option to choose the type of form, the plugin goes so far as to let you set the loading animation as well. There are several options here, and the ability to tweak them further as needed. It’s really impressive when you consider how many unique opt-in forms you can create with these tools.

The final point I’d like to cover is pricing. Looking at the price tag, it’s going to be $89 per year. This may seem like a steep entry fee, but let’s not forget that this price also gives you access to all of Elegant Themes’ plugins and themes.

But with our exclusive deal until , you get an additional 10% OFF on their excellent value deal, so grab a bargain now.

Final Thoughts

Bloom is an incredibly well designed and customizable plugin. The features and benefits it offers for your email marketing efforts are extremely evident. I can’t recommend it enough, especially when you consider all the additional themes, plugins, and features you get with your membership to Elegant Themes.

Do you utilize it for your email opt-in forms? Let us know how it works for you in the comments!

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